we are such stuff as dreams are made on
by Phoenix Satori
Summary: They peruse a room of infinite space and exacted prices. Clow.Yuuko.
1. Destiny's Dump

Disclaimer: DOI (don't own it.)

Clow, Yuuko, and a room full of treasures (prices paid).

* * *

**Destiny's Dump**

"_It's curious, isn't it?" Clow is watching her (like he always seems to be watching her, with a wide smile that conceals and bright, open eyes that lie, frequently and cunningly) place a sealed, seemingly empty jar next to a gilded candlestick, which rests at a crooked angle against a yellowing and dusty tome with no title on its spine, which is half lying on a somewhat newer sheaf of paper with brightly-coloured shapes and figures scrawled in a child's hand, which is above and below and next to a million million other treasures belonging to the countless souls who have stumbled unwittingly (though still inevitably) through the front gate of her shop. "That so many destinies are tied to such a variegated spectrum of objects?" He hefts an elegant silver kris in one hand, testing its balance. His eyes flit about the room –as ever, when she allows him within in—tirelessly, but invariably settle back on her, where she stands silently, observing him stoically._

"_Humans are nothing if not unpredictably predictable." She runs long fingers over the porcelain-silk texture of an ancient vase, half-smiling. "Caprice is unfailingly the law, the notion of possession and attachment consistently universal. And destinies reflect –perhaps personify— this truth. Materials are, after all, the essence of human value. They always have been." _

_Clow studies her silently. Then, with the careful refinement he uses to perform even the most benign tasks, he nudges a small ceramic pagoda out of the way with his toes, and then their distance has closed and his hands are in her hair, combing through silk-water tresses as easily as one might navigate the soft-quiet liquid of a still pond. It is a familiar gesture, intimate without the complications of intimacy, and she (almost-unconsciously-but-not-quite) leans into his touch._

"_Always?" Is the steady whisper that ghosts across her ear. Her knee is against his thigh, her cheek against the wire-thin frame of his glasses, pressing just so. _

_Yuuko closes her eyes, feels the wish he will never make in the pads of his fingers, burning satin-smooth trails along the nape of her neck, in the weight of his eyes, falling closed as she leans into his embrace, and her breath escapes her as a trembling sigh. _

"_No," her lips are the gentle pressure at his jaw, his wish is the unspoken desire on his tongue, "not always."_

* * *

tra-la-la.

Clow likes Shiny Things.

So the two of us have something in common.


	2. Tomoe's Treasure

DOI.

* * *

**Tomoe's Treasure**

"And this one?" She sips languorously at the wine, and it is bitter on her lips, tart on her tongue, honey-sweet and thick at her throat, and heavily, sensuously _warm_ from her chest to the tips of her toes. She exhales shakily and does not open her eyes to see what he is holding. She smells the old earth-musk of paper, and the conspicuous whisper of hakubaiko.

"A young woman with a lost love, seeking the one who stole him away. I showed her the way." Sorrow is the sigh escaping her, and he does not inquire further.

* * *

For clarification:

Tomoe's price to find Kenshin --to try and exact her revenge-- is a journal (not the one in the OAV; I had envisioned this one to be full of her happy thoughts growing up, her secret excitement at getting engaged to Kiyosato, etc) smelling of her signature perfume.

Yep.


	3. Pandora's Box

DOI.

Apparently once Yuuko catered to the Greeks.

* * *

**Pandora's Box**

"It's…it's _beautiful_." He breathes, just as the sake topples her painfully into him. From her new, smarting position at his (ridiculously broad) shoulder, she sees that his newest acquisition is an intricate, extraordinary gilded box with a monstrous ruby at its heart, flanked by dancing diamond and glowing pearl.

She knows that he is smarter than to presume that anything in this room is safe enough to open without her express permission, but she hears in his voice the self-same impulsive, unmindful, curious zeal that had once unleashed untold horrors upon the unsuspecting denizens of this reality, and abruptly (softly, carefully), she lays her hand on top of his where it is tracing the limned flowers near the latch.

"A foolish girl before you said the very same thing," she is slightly less sober than she thinks, "and now Hope lives here alone." He does not immediately set the container down –indeed, it is several ponderous seconds later before he finally sets it aside, and it is, perhaps, this moment that she realizes that one day he is going to kill himself.

* * *

More coming (eventually).

Doumeki may appear in the next chapter.

I haven't quite decided yet.


	4. Abomination's Appellation

This chapter was a bit of experimentation with a new style; the perspective is a bit...tangled. (You'll see what I mean, I suppose.)

--regular text indicates the present--

--_italicized text indicates the past_--

All references to the 'room/vault/dump/what-have-you' are, as per the story, referring to Yuuko's attic-looking space for prices paid.

Anypoo, enjoy.

* * *

**Abomination's Appellation**

In his charmingly stentorian manner, Watanuki decries her as the most notorious packrat in the whole of existence.

"This place is a _dump_, Yuuko-san! Can't we afford to get rid of some of this? Haven't you figured out some way to catalogue any of it? _Centuries'_ worth of junk, and you're giving me an _afternoon_ to clean and organize it?"

"I have faith in your abilities, Watanuki." Flattery always seems to ply him, though his boisterous complaints never abate. This time is no exception, and his amusing deprecations evolve into something of a diatribe that wanders ineffable paths of logic she's going to need another few cups of sake to truly appreciate.

"I suppose with you in charge, though, this place was _destined_ to become a dump…"

Memory has always been a curious phenomenon for Yuuko; the experience of invoking one is so very much more than an unconscious, instantaneous withdrawal from mental storage; she is not bound by mortal, linear constructions of time (or space, for that matter), and when, in unguarded moments, she forgets herself and indulges in a brief reminiscence, she finds herself suddenly, violently fractured, simultaneously reliving the past and existing also in the present, driven inexorably forward every second into the future.

She's toasting with Larg when Watanuki's words reach her, and she looks up at him from across the lawn, where she's relaxing as he's slicking dust from a bundle of ribbons between his fingers, and the world **bends**.

_"I've heard your Abomination's got an endearing name for my Treasure Vault." The placid, friendly smile Clow offers Cerberus, lounging by the fireplace, appears to terrify the Sun Beast. _

_"Don't kill the messenger! Yue's the one who said it!" A gigantic, immortal feline, a being of radiant, unfathomable energy, cowed at this silly idiot's feet, nearly desperate with fear? There is an unpleasant irony in there somewhere, she thinks. "She bribed me with sweets!"_

_"It's true, I did." Yuuko assures him. _

_"My dear, Yue wasn't attempting to—"_

_"'Destiny's dump,' was it? I rather like it, actually." His face –_

--scrunches up in private humor, as if something delightful has occurred to him. Watanuki's laughter rips into the afternoon sky, crashes onto the porch, banging rhythmically against the wood.

"A dump for destiny," he chuckles, "Destiny's dump! Get it?" He—

--_shifts, a sort of barely-movement that pulls the dancing flame's shadow to the intangible melody of his Whimsy, slicking light across his cheekbones, softening the angles of his face._

_"It's fitting, anyway." She concedes, watching him. "Though how your depressing creature came to know about all my precious junk in the first place is another matter entirely." He doesn't even have the simple decency to look abashed; instead, his smile performs a lazy, stretching sort of glide, a look of elegant serenity—_

--pinching his features together in sudden, quiet concern.

"Yuuko-san…?" The ribbons slip from his fingers, forgotten, while he shuffles toward her hesitantly, uncertain, though plainly aware that something's amiss. He reaches her quickly (he is very tall, exceedingly so, and his strides are long, his gait hurried by anxiety) and drops to his knees before her, eyes wide with worry. Then, with a sort of wibbling poise, he stretches a (shaking) hand to bridge the distance between them. "Yuuko-san—"

_"—dearest, who knows what curious indiscretions these summer wines allow?" Clow grins like the smug bastard he is, flashing his teeth as his hands fall to her hips, the warm cradle of his embrace belied by the wicked amusement of his countenance._

_He apparently thinks quoting her tipsy intimation (from months ago, when she'd been soused enough to insist on singing for him) is somehow magically supposed to absolve him of responsibility for his misbehavior, for divulging the existence of her Vault to his most unspeakable creation, that miserable aberration he'd damned to live forever with an infinitely human capacity for love, for despair._

_This stupid, stupid man. _

_She smiles sweetly and experiences a moment of perverse delight at the way Cerberus silently cowers behind his fool of a master._

"You realize, of course, that I'm going to _kill you_." Watanuki draws back in mute shock at the threat, horrified, and Larg makes a sound of choked surprise beside her.

"Ano…Yuu-Yuuko-san…?" The sky is blue, the sun is high and bright and oppressive as it ever is in the midst of a Japanese summer, Cerberus is in another city, beholden to a girl-child with glittering green eyes, Yue is tragically in love with yet another mortal, Clow is as dead as a man who rips his soul in half can be, and Watanuki, the dear, looks near to wetting himself. (Oops.)

She takes a deep, settling breath.

"Apologies, Watanuki-kun." Yuuko sweeps the back of her pale hand across his cheek. "These summer wines are not to be trusted." And then she's on her feet, padding purposefully toward her cabinet for something stronger, more bitter, less sweet. Whiskey, perhaps, or brandy if she's got any left. "My Dump, Watanuki!" She calls from the within the shop, slicing him a glance from the open door, where he's standing, apparently torn between approaching her and running like hell. "There's still a great deal of cleaning left to be done, if I recall."

"A-ah!" He bobs his head sharply, bows stiffly, and hurries back out onto her lawn to resume his task without another backward glance. Watanuki is so hopelessly eager to please, so perfectly, disastrously innocent.

It is going to be a very long day.

* * *

Because she deserves all the credit an (humblingly incredible) author can get, I'll freely admit that Yuuko's sentiments toward Yue are pilfered from kittu9, whose works should Definitely Be Read. (All of them --not just from xxxHolic.)

She may well be god.

Next chapter: Sesshoumaru makes a wish the way only pompous dog lords can.


	5. Sesshoumaru's Sword

This one's rather longer than the others and (yet again) has a bit of a different flavor.

Also.

It's been a while since I watched/read any Inuyasha, so if Sesshy-poo seems a bit...er...ridiculously lofty, then I apologize. That's just how I remember him.

ONWARD!

* * *

**Sesshoumaru's Sword**

Clow does not tell her how stunning she is when she laughs, does not remark upon the powerfully expressive quality of the sound, the way it ripples, a gentle, liquid glide, a sonorous trill, sweetly resonant and dark with mischief, and ancient, echoing across the ages and innumerable congruent realities. Neither does he call attention to the Hedonist's Surfeit of empty liquor bottles at her lovely feet, though the liquids once contained within are doubtlessly the architects of her rare, unbridled mirth.

In point of fact, he says nothing at all, and remains carefully serene, his composure an elegant artifice borne of vigilant practice and the enduring philosophy of patient sophistry, lest any untoward or telling action make her realize prematurely that he's enjoying himself, which extensive experience tells him would force her to surrender her jollity to stubborn pride.

Instead, he is content to watch her clutching at the fabric of the tiny ochre-orange, checker-patterned yukata, laughing with abandon at some memory to which he is not yet privy.

Scant moments before, he'd asked her wonderingly if some lost child had once wandered into her shop seeking aid, and what the youth had asked of her. Immediately, Yuuko had dissolved into helpless giggles, and Clow had been left to linger in delighted stupefaction (where he waits still, actually), hopeful that his thoughtful patience will ultimately effect a reward in the form of the tale belonging to the scruffy, well-worn cloth.

When at last she settles and wipes joyful tears from her pale cheeks, she fixes him with an ironic look, and he is met unexpectedly by the full, playful humor of this woman with infinity in her eyes.

It strikes him, not for the first time, that she is more lovely than she knows, and a great deal more lovely than he deserves.

"The child was the price, not the customer." She chuckles softly. "Allow me to regale you, Clow Reed, with the Legend of the Stupidest Puppy."

He smiles warmly at her as she lifts the ivory stem of the pipe to her lips and takes a generous drag, stilling when she exhales, softly reposed as writhing tendrils of mist and bitter sugar coil endlessly between them, cloying and slightly acrid in his throat. As ever, the lovely flower's breath assumes the aspect of so many sinuous, spiraling dragons, whorled in their sapphire splendor, twisting up, up, up into oblivion. He slips willingly into the abstracted vision trance of her memory, a phantom-reel of images connected to the cadence of her voice, a fantastical shadow play illuminated by the tenor of her narration.

***

Sesshoumaru happens upon her sometime very shortly after acquiring the riddle divining the location of his father's grave, emerging from a copse of trees to her clearing, golden eyes blinking back surprise at the forested divan upon which she lies, languid, bathing in the sunlight. He recognizes her at once for something neither mortal nor immortal –something _endless_, something infinite and unfathomable, something mysterious and humblingly powerful.

He approaches her with sterling confidence and liquid grace, something hard and implacable about the cold stoicism of his features. He less beholds than he does _appraise_ her nudity, neither admiring the alluring length of her legs nor the enticing curve of her waist, noting the curious luminescence of her skin in the golden light with (a near offensively) dispassionate objectivity.

She lifts her head to regard him, unabashed at her own nudity (what has eternity to glean from shame?), and then angles an elbow against the stony seat and lays her cheek coolly against the palm of her hand, considering him, bemused at the juxtaposition they make; the delightful antipodes of gold and silver, woman and man, ageless and immortal. She admires him ephemerally, the smooth line of his jaw, the sinuous beauty of his platinum mane, the way he holds himself and seems verily to _exude_ majesty.

_('A bit like your Abomination,' she says, meaning Yue, and he smiles weakly past the bitter censure in her suddenly heavy gaze, "They both have that whole bottomless despair and emptiness thing going on," she slurs, and then, pinning him with quiet intensity, "you know, the sort borne of unwitting immortality and the inability to __die__." _

_Clow knows somehow, intuitively, that she's not just talking about his ill-fated guardian anymore._)

She speaks,

"Tell me, taiyoukai, what it is that you want of me." The regal demon seems neither confused nor surprised at the instruction; to the contrary, he has an answer at the ready in very nearly the next breath.

"This Sesshoumaru demands his father's Fang, his birthright." (_She laughingly tells Clow about this remark, about the dog lord's hilarious Third Person Proclivities._) Yuuko candidly informs him that there is, of course, a price for the promise of the sword. He doesn't so much as blink before he charges her to name it.

Blithely,

"The Fang is yours, then, Noble Sesshoumaru, for naught but the sum of a single human life."

"This Sesshoumaru has no compunctions against dispatching one such foul creature." His nose wrinkles inelegantly, and her laughter rings musically through the surrounding trees.

"You misunderstand, my lord. Your prize is dubious eventuality unless you make the covenant, here and now, to use the Fang to _spare_ the life of a human being." One fine brow furrows nearly imperceptibly, and it strikes her as somehow remarkable that this feeble mimicry of countenanced locution can so eloquently communicate his skepticism.

"The price does not fit the reward," he tells her frankly, his tone newly flavored with condescension, "as surely you are aware of this Sesshoumaru's disdain for these, the primitive wretches which comprise the human stain, and just as well, you cannot be ignorant of this lord's beneficent undertaking to excise the corruption and put end to the pitiful futility of their mortal labors." She meets the forbidding implication of his disclosure with cool impassivity. "You must know that the attainment of the Fang necessarily facilitates greater such casualties. If it is to be just the one life…" She grins with something of a flippant equanimity, and the demon lord frowns discernibly.

"It is my price, my Lord of the West. Take it or leave it." Suddenly unsure, suddenly suspicious, he nevertheless inclines his head –_barely_—to indicate that the transaction is complete, their business at an end.

She smirks at him, a sly, ironic quirk of the lips, and then the Universe slides, condenses, dissolves, swells, and shivers all around her before it expands and crawls (with bitter, sluggish indolence) back into place –and just slightly to the right.

Yuuko tells Clow that Sesshoumaru got his 'damned sword,' though it hadn't been precisely what he'd expected –his 'birthright,' the fang left to him by his venerable father, was called the _Tenseiga_ (as opposed to the _Tetsusaiga_, which she tells him went to his reviled hanyou sibling), a sword whose powers bring life instead of death, salvation instead of despair –and the human he'd saved, a little girl ravaged by wolves, had changed his perspective on the 'primitive wretches' forever after.

"Brought low," she says, laughter yet in her voice, and he has the feeling she's quoting the demon lord of long past, "by the very beings this Sesshoumaru scorns and despises."

* * *

(Just in case it wasn't clear --the checker-patterned yukata belonged to Rin, the little girl Sesshoumaru brought back to life and basically adopted.)

Seriously, this fandom needs to be much larger. Clow and Yuuko are the bomb-diggity.

Spread the word, you marvelous chums, you.

To arms!

[Next chapter: Yuuko treats with the Goblin King, and snarks ingloriously about his Most Excellent Breeches. They toast to their (inexplicable, unfortunate) fondness for selfish mortals.]


End file.
